The underground railroad engine
was fueled by heartbeats and dreams,
chugging towards change.
We are back with Chelsea Clinton,
who co-created these,
She Persisted chapter books series
and in its first installment,
She Persisted Harriet Tubman is out now.
It is incredible
but much more importantly than my opinion,
joining us to talk about it,
please welcome our resident reviewer, Jonah Larson,
who has a very special guest with him,
it's her first time on the show, I'm so excited,
His sister, Mercy. (crowd cheering)
Hi Drew, hi Chelsea.
Hi Mercy, hi Jonah.
Hi Drew, hi Chelsea.
I'm 13 now, Drew,
just turned 13 two days ago.
Oh, congratulations, Jonah,
you're an official teenager
and although you were born 50 years old
and wiser than most people I know,
I congratulate you on getting into the teen years.
Happy birthday.
Thank you very much.
I'm so glad to be back on the show again
reviewing a book with my special sister, Mercy.
Thank you.
Jonah and Mercy, I can't think of anyone
also as I said to the incredible Chelsea Clinton
how qualified she is to hold a conversation
in today's times.
And Jonah and Mercy, you are the most qualified souls
to speak of this book, please take the floor.
So to start with, we absolutely loved the book.
There were so many amazing messages throughout it
and about how Harriet Tubman persisted
and I'm gonna let Mercy take over and share
her thoughts about it because she has some really good ones.
Yes I do.
So I loved the book
because Harriet, she cherished her freedom
after she came to freedom and escaped from slavery.
I liked how she cherished her freedom so much
that she risked her life to bring other people to freedom.
And she's just one of the women in history who is strong,
like your mom here, for example,
she is a very strong woman.
And I just loved the book.
Yes, it was really nice
and just in our family,
there's tons of women we look up to
and tons of people we look up to
when we need some extra strength and some support
when we're going through a hard time
and one of those women, Chelsea, is your mom.
And she's right up there with Michelle Obama
and Rosie Riveter. Yes.
And those are some of the women that we look to
when we need strength in the Larson family.
And so thank you and please thank your mom for me
for helping keep us strong
and making us persist
and those are the people we look to
when we need to persist in something and keep going.
And I thought it was just so serendipitous
that your first book was about Harriet Tubman
and I actually did Harriet Tubman
and I dressed like her for my school presentation.
Aw, oh,
Mercy and Jonah, She did.
Oh, matter of fact, I even crocheted part of her outfit
and she did such a good job
and it was really nice to learn more about Harriet Tubman.
Oh, well, Mercy I hope that maybe you can send us
a picture so we can see you dressed as Harriet Tubman.
Yeah.
In the outfit that Jonah helped crochet for you.
And I loved Definitely.
That you have my mom and Mrs Obama and Rosie the Riveter
bobble heads with you,
I think that is a great trifecta
and I will certainly pass on what you said to my mom
when I talk to her later.
And I'm so, I'm so proud
that you like the book,
that you're drawing such inspiration from Harriet.
I think Andrea, who wrote the book,
did such a magical job of helping show
how Harriet really persisted her whole life,
I mean she first tried to escape slavery when she was a kid.
And really 'til the end of her life
when she was fighting for her pension
after having been in the union army of the civil war,
helping to take care of other civil war vets
and other formerly enslaved people,
you know, that she persisted and stood up
and fought for what was right
from when she was even younger than Jonah and Mercy are
until the end of her life,
I just find her example gives me a lot of inspiration
and the message is really challenging, hopefully,
to all of us to always do the right thing.
And Chelsea, I love the She Persisted books
and I read them to my own girls, Olive and Frankie,
and I really loved this detail in the book
where in the back it says how you can persist
and it's three pages of points
of how you can carry this as a human
in actionability in very specific ways
throughout your days and lives
and I found incredible.
I also think it's so interesting
that Penguin Random House
is issuing these books, one a month,
so there will be 12, two in December,
and I think the roll out program of these books
is very unique and something I wanted to mention
because I was really inspired by it,
as I am inspired by Jonah and Mercy.
Chelsea, I'm so inspired by you,
to be in your guys' company today
makes this just an incredible day
and especially in light of everything that is happening,
to feel safe and insightful with eloquent aspirations,
historical references and the necessary intentions
of how we proceed in this life and in this world,
thank you so much, all of you,
for this enlightened and utterly beautiful conversation.
(audience cheering and clapping)
Thank you for having me on the show.
Thank you, Mercy, I'm so happy you're here, finally.
Let's do this again.
Jonah, I love you, happy birthday
and Chelsea Clinton, She Persisted Harriet Tubman
is available right now.
Chelsea, thank you for being here.
(upbeat pop music)